Well, I have been working through the 'To Do' list (have finally sorted out all those old writing magazines), but I have also found time to enter a competition in Writing Magazine. The main reason for entering this particular competition, was the prize - a copy of The Lifestyle Writer by Sarah Beth Watkins. Just what I need if I am to commit seriously to writing for magazines next year:
www.amazon.co.uk/The-Lifestyle-Writer-Family-Market/dp/1780999844/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386075083&sr=8-1&keywords=lifestyle+writer
The competition? 200 words on Healthy Eating for a Womans magazine.
It was difficult to stick to the 200 words, but I did it and was quite proud of what I wrote.
We shall have to see if the competition judges agree with me, or if I will be buying my own copy!!
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
Saturday, 9 November 2013
A To Do List for my To Do Lists.....
Inspired by a friends recent posting on Facebook, I have started to plan the next month or so.
I have had the same items on my 'To Do' list for weeks (possibly months) so I have broken them down into the weeks leading up to Christmas. Spreading them out like this will hopefully give me the space I need to complete them one at a time.
Looking at a long list of thing to do can be overwhelming, so I am hoping that by Christmas I have accomplished all that I have set out to do.
This weekend I need to sort out my old writing magazines from 2010 / 2011 and file all my collected articles in their correct place within my writing files (I have a number of files for different genres where I keep any articles that I have found interesting, useful or just sparked an idea).
Better get on with it then......
I have had the same items on my 'To Do' list for weeks (possibly months) so I have broken them down into the weeks leading up to Christmas. Spreading them out like this will hopefully give me the space I need to complete them one at a time.
Looking at a long list of thing to do can be overwhelming, so I am hoping that by Christmas I have accomplished all that I have set out to do.
This weekend I need to sort out my old writing magazines from 2010 / 2011 and file all my collected articles in their correct place within my writing files (I have a number of files for different genres where I keep any articles that I have found interesting, useful or just sparked an idea).
Better get on with it then......
Wednesday, 6 November 2013
The Woman Who Thought Too Much
No, it wasn't me. Although I have often been told I think too much, it was Joanne Limburg, who has written her memoir and given it this title.
The book is about her life as a poet with OCD and she describes her journey with the 'disease'. On the last page of the book, she writes; but then, as I've said, no one expects normality from a poet.
As someone who is "a little bit OCD" as comic Jon Richardson famously described himself, (see: www.channel4.com/programmes/jon-richardson-a-little-bit-ocd) I found the memoir very interesting and, I thank God (or whoever), that I have been spared its full trauma.
As part of Joanne's research for the book, she spoke to a leading psychiatrist who suggested that what underlies such crippling perfectionism is the need for that 'just right' feeling that drives all kinds of compulsions from hand washing and oven checking through to counting and word repetition, in which sufferers may use emotional criteria that you don't finish something until it feels right, rather than taking the objective view.
Towards the end of the book she writes; the trouble with writing.....is that you fear in advance - or rather, you know in advance - that whatever comes out on the page is bound to fall short of the fuzzily luminous piece of perfection that you plan to write beforehand.
She goes onto say; one of the necessary conditions of creativity is the ability to bear the disillusionment which an encounter with one's realworld, unidealized products inevitably brings.
However, as she notes, the making of poems can be an ingenious attempt at self-cure, a kind of symbolic healing. She says the formal working-through of the poem on the page brings about a corresponding working-through of a problem in the psyche. Difficulties with emotion and experience are transformed on the page into difficulties with form, and as you find a solution to these, an acceptable compromise between the experience or thought you are trying to express and the means available to express it, there is a sense of real physical and emotional release.
In the book she includes the poem The Return about the death of her father. As one who has also lost her father, I thought it was wonderful and very moving. Also see Inner Bloke on her webpage.
I have ordered a copy of her book of poems; Femenismo.
See: www.joannelimburg.net/
The book is about her life as a poet with OCD and she describes her journey with the 'disease'. On the last page of the book, she writes; but then, as I've said, no one expects normality from a poet.
As someone who is "a little bit OCD" as comic Jon Richardson famously described himself, (see: www.channel4.com/programmes/jon-richardson-a-little-bit-ocd) I found the memoir very interesting and, I thank God (or whoever), that I have been spared its full trauma.
As part of Joanne's research for the book, she spoke to a leading psychiatrist who suggested that what underlies such crippling perfectionism is the need for that 'just right' feeling that drives all kinds of compulsions from hand washing and oven checking through to counting and word repetition, in which sufferers may use emotional criteria that you don't finish something until it feels right, rather than taking the objective view.
Towards the end of the book she writes; the trouble with writing.....is that you fear in advance - or rather, you know in advance - that whatever comes out on the page is bound to fall short of the fuzzily luminous piece of perfection that you plan to write beforehand.
She goes onto say; one of the necessary conditions of creativity is the ability to bear the disillusionment which an encounter with one's realworld, unidealized products inevitably brings.
However, as she notes, the making of poems can be an ingenious attempt at self-cure, a kind of symbolic healing. She says the formal working-through of the poem on the page brings about a corresponding working-through of a problem in the psyche. Difficulties with emotion and experience are transformed on the page into difficulties with form, and as you find a solution to these, an acceptable compromise between the experience or thought you are trying to express and the means available to express it, there is a sense of real physical and emotional release.
In the book she includes the poem The Return about the death of her father. As one who has also lost her father, I thought it was wonderful and very moving. Also see Inner Bloke on her webpage.
I have ordered a copy of her book of poems; Femenismo.
See: www.joannelimburg.net/
Thursday, 31 October 2013
Tuesday, 22 October 2013
Happy Birthday Blog - 6 Years!!
And you catch me in a bit of a limbo.........working on my Master Plan.........
Saturday, 12 October 2013
No Mercy!
Have no mercy on yourself. Cut. Destroy. Revise. Take entire pages out. Bad writing is like a bad relationship. Don't be addicted to it just because you are familiar with its ways. Let go.
However, don't be merciless on your characters. Do not look down upon them. Our job is not to judge them but to understand them and help other people understand them. Empathy is the key word.
Elif Shafak, Rules for Writing, The Daily Telegraph
Quoted in Writers News September 2013 www.writers-online.co.uk
However, don't be merciless on your characters. Do not look down upon them. Our job is not to judge them but to understand them and help other people understand them. Empathy is the key word.
Elif Shafak, Rules for Writing, The Daily Telegraph
Quoted in Writers News September 2013 www.writers-online.co.uk
Tuesday, 8 October 2013
Better to write for yourself....
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self
Cyril Connolly quoted in Octobers Writers' News. www.writers-online.co.uk
Cyril Vernon Connolly (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon (1940–1949) and wrote Enemies of Promise (1938), which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of fiction that he had aspired to be in his youth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Connolly
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